


In a Dream It Seemed Real

by beersforqueers



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: All the Kinds of Sex, Canon Typical Alcohol/Drug Use, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Slow-ish Burn?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-08-08 13:44:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 17,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7760077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beersforqueers/pseuds/beersforqueers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam didn't want to see them together, but that doesn't mean he won't have to deal with the consequences. Especially when the consequences are an angry Ronan Lynch and two teenage boys doing their best not to confront their feelings.</p><p>Kavinsky isn't helping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the Islands song, cause, like, I can't come up with new titles at this point.
> 
> First work in The Raven Cycle fandom so AAAAAAAAAA!!!! I have the feeling there might be more to come if this goes well...

It was true that Adam was Ronan’s first kiss.

That didn’t mean, though, that Ronan’s mouth hadn’t ever been on anyone else’s body, that he’d never done other things. Adam wasn’t naïve.

He’d seen for himself.

Adam was beginning to think that it was stupid, really, the expectation that people advance sequentially through a relationship. Hold hands first, kiss second, wait till the fourth date to hook up in the back of a car parked on the shadowy edge of town.

What if you skipped all of those steps in favor of getting fucked over the hood of a car by an adrenaline-addled cokehead?

Well, Adam couldn’t judge.

Except that he did.

It was hot and sticky that day, the Henrietta air a damp blanket rolled up tight around his face and chest, determined to smother him. He sucked in deep breaths, ignoring the sweat trickling down his neck. There were more important things to worry about.

Gansey was frantic, had dragged Adam out of the auto shop in the middle of a shift to explain that he didn’t know where Ronan was, that he’d been gone for days now. Adam had listened with a dark sense of foreboding. Half of him believed that this was finally it. They’d find Ronan lying in a ditch somewhere, flies and carrion birds circling, the BMW’s windshield spewing across its mangled hood. The explosive projectile that was Ronan Lynch finally launched home, ejected from its carrier by a telephone pole or tree trunk.

The rest of him knew better, and _this_ was the half that was grimly concerned.

Gansey had set off with Blue to search Cabeswater, although by all accounts that should have been Adam’s job. He didn’t protest, just waved Gansey vaguely away and told him he knew where to start looking.

He’d had his suspicions for a while, and that was how he’d come to be in Kavinsky’s front yard, standing to the side of the gravel driveway, a mosquito whining in his ear, watching as Kavinsky bent a very naked Ronan over the side of a white Mitsubishi.

He had to wince a little; Kavinsky didn’t look particularly gentle, and from this distance (which was to say, not far enough away) Adam could see Ronan grit his teeth and brace his legs against the yawning black grille. He snarled something to Kavinsky, who threw his head back in a raucous laugh and slapped Ronan’s thigh cheerfully. It left a hand-shaped welt on the pale skin, and Ronan’s face flushed pink to match.

Adam swallowed thickly, paralyzed by the sight of Ronan laid out so bare in front of him. He knew he wouldn’t want to be seen like this without his permission, and Adam felt dirty and wrong for being here to witness it. But he couldn’t make his feet move, told himself that the reason he was frozen just inside the tree line was because he didn’t want them to spot him. It wasn’t because he wanted to see how far this went.

The click of a cap opening echoed in Adam’s good ear like a gunshot. Odd how he wouldn’t have expected Kavinsky to be considerate enough for prep, but he supposed that Kavinsky probably had more experience with anal sex than Adam did. Maybe that was why…

Adam shut down that line of thinking. Ronan’s sidelong glances, his lingering smiles, his pointed _not_ -touching: it didn’t have to mean anything. It probably didn’t mean anything. It was just that for a while now Adam had been noticing Ronan’s noticing, and he wasn’t immune to it. It was new and flattering and dangerous. To be wanted by something as sharp and lethal as Ronan Lynch felt how he imagined drag racing must. Ronan’s motivations suddenly came into sharper focus.

Was he getting the same rush now, from Kavinsky? From Kavinsky’s fingers pushing into him, from his teeth closing over Ronan’s shoulder, pushed up onto his toes so he could reach? Ronan’s fingers went tight against the hood, knuckles white and ghostly even as the sun bleached everything of its color.

It was dreamlike, surreal, and Adam clung to that as a possible explanation for his current predicament. He had stumbled into one of Ronan’s dreams, where the nebulous connection between Ronan and Kavinsky had finally snapped taut and landed them both here.

Something dark and twisted inside of Adam reared up, a sick wish that he were the one doing this to Ronan instead of Kavinsky. But Adam was the intruder here, not Kavinsky.

Especially not when it was Kavinsky wringing a breathy moan out of Ronan’s throat, Kavinsky whose name Ronan spat as he pressed his forehead to hot white metal.

Kavinsky laughed again, whispered something unintelligible to Ronan that had his face contorting with some emotion straddling the border of lust and loathing.

Then Ronan nodded, a single hard jerk of his chin, and Kavinsky pulled away. He splayed fingers wide across Ronan’s lower back, holding him steady, and took his own cock in hand. Adam felt an unfamiliar rush of cruel jealousy as Kavinsky nudged forward, then slid home all at once.

Ronan shouted, Kavinsky swore, Adam’s knees buckled. He caught himself on the closest tree and tried to tear his eyes away. Kavinsky was setting a punishing pace, Ronan just trying to hold on for dear life, and even though it didn’t look at all pleasurable, Ronan’s hand reached down to palm his own dick. His eyes were screwed closed in concentration, his lips parted, groans slipping from between them to mingle with the obscene sound of skin on skin. This was a whole new Ronan, one that was truly unhinged, at the edge of himself, barely contained by his own body.

Kavinsky’s hands were biting into Ronan’s hips, leaving smeared purple bruises in their wake, but when one of them wrapped around Ronan’s throat from behind, the violence of it still shocked Adam. He nearly darted forward to stop him, sure that this couldn’t end well, but apparently Ronan disagreed. His entire body locked up, back bowing away from the hood of the car, pressing harder into Kavinsky’s fingers. He came all over the paint, great rasping breaths struggling to break free as Kavinsky’s fingers tightened.

He fucked Ronan through his orgasm, harsh and unforgiving, hips snapping forward until he froze inside him, yanking Ronan back by the throat so that they were flush against one another. They panted together for a few seconds afterward, and then Kavinsky pulled out roughly, manhandling Ronan so that they faced one another. Adam had to look away. They were about to kiss, and he knew that if he saw that, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from doing something drastic. The coiled spring of hurt and rage inside his chest was straining against his skin, and he didn’t want to know what would happen if he loosed it.

“NO!”

Ronan’s voice cracked through the still summer air, and Adam’s head jerked around. Ronan was pushing Kavinsky away, stumbling to pull on his clothes as quickly as possible.

Kavinsky looked spiteful, petulant. He grabbed for Ronan, who was grappling with his worn black tank top. Ronan yanked it the rest of the way over his head and gripped Kavinsky by the biceps, holding him at arm’s length. His voice was clear and cutting, unlike the mumbled curses Kavinsky seemed to still be spewing.

“It’s never gonna be you and me, K.”

Adam sagged against the tree again. Ronan’s eyes looked empty, hollowed of emotion as he turned from Kavinsky and began to walk away. Kavinsky said something to his retreating back, and Ronan threw a withering glance over his shoulder.

His eyes caught on Adam.

“Adam?”

Adam saw Ronan’s mouth form the word, saw Kavinsky turn to track Ronan’s gaze, saw his cruel mouth quirk up at the corner.

His mind flashed through possibilities, trying to land upon one where the two people he’d just watched having sex didn’t know that he’d been standing here the whole time. He came up empty, and so he did the only thing he could think of.

Heart in his throat, blood pulsing painfully loud in his ears, he snatched up his bike and peddled away.

The sight of white fingers wrapped around Ronan’s throat, of Ronan’s face slack with shock and exhaustion, of his plush lips wrapping around a single word, all played through his mind.

He kept seeing it over and over again, hearing it on loop in his head. _Adam? Adam? Adam?_  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos make my LIFE!!! Please don't hesitate to leave one--I like to hear from people about literally anything


	2. Chapter 2

It was a lot harder to avoid Ronan when he was sitting directly across from him in a booth at Nino’s.

Adam fiddled with his silverware, rolled the paper napkin ring up as tight as he could manage, watched it unfurl again. He crossed his legs and nearly froze when the gesture made his shin skim along Ronan’s knee. He flipped the menu over to stare unseeingly down the list of alcoholic drinks he wasn’t even allowed to order.

Ronan, for his part, was staring intently at Adam. Adam didn’t think he’d allowed himself this type of unbridled _obviousness_ for the entirety of his…whatever this was. Probably, if Adam were to look up, Ronan’s gaze would skitter away, fix on an object out the window, or on the bell tinkling gently above the door. He wouldn’t acknowledge what had happened, and Adam wasn’t about to.

The intelligent part of Adam wasn’t about to.

The problem was that the black, tangled knot of anger and reckless envy was still pulsating darkly in the pit of his stomach, and every time he thought about Ronan, about Kavinsky, about a sun-bleached gravel driveway, he wanted to hit something. This impulse terrified him. He wasn’t that person, and he couldn’t allow himself to be. Flirting with the darkness wasn’t an option.

It didn’t help that Ronan was wearing a high-necked grey sweater, the zipper pulled up to just under his chin. Rather than drawing attention from the presence of marks underneath, it drew Adam’s gaze like a homing beacon.

It was a massive relief when Gansey slid into the booth next to him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said breezily, laying his Glendower journal gently on the table in front of him. He flicked it open with a practiced hand and ran a finger down a long column of coordinates. “I had this thought on the way over, and I had to pull over and write it down…”

He was speaking expansively now, hand flying through the air to punctuate his sentences, his eyes alight with the thrill of the chase. Adam’s eyes flicked over to Ronan involuntarily, darted away again, were drawn back. Ronan wasn’t really listening to Gansey—that much was obvious—but his blank face belied his concentration on _something_.

Adam would give a lot to know what was going on underneath the harsh, mask-like planes of his face. He had to separate the desire to know from the suddenly inescapable desire to touch. It was like the moment that he’d seen Ronan naked and undone, he had become real for the first time. Ronan wasn’t held apart, he wasn’t unknowable; you could press on him and leave an indent, a mark to show you’d been there. For as long as Adam had been aware of Ronan, he had thought he was impervious to human contact.

But in his own way, Ronan was deeply impressionable.

It terrified Adam.

“Jane!”

Gansey’s delighted voice cut through Adam’s musings, and he jolted up, realizing as he did so that Ronan was glaring at him. Adam had zoned out to the cruel cut of Ronan’s cheekbones, the gentle slope of his skull beneath soft-shorn hair, and Ronan had noticed.

Adam flushed and looked away.

“Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” Ronan hissed under the cover of Blue and Gansey’s conversation, and Adam’s head snapped back around. Ronan had already moved on though, greeting Blue with a disdainful, “Hey maggot.”

Blue rolled her eyes and dropped onto the seat next to Ronan. “This shift is killing my soul,” she tapped her order pad on the formica tabletop and glowered at a table of boys nearby. “I’m thinking about spitting in their pizza.”

Gansey puffed up immediately. “If they’re being ungentlemanly, Jane—“ he began, but she waved him off with a scowl.

“I can take care of myself,” she reminded him, but Adam couldn’t help but notice that the words didn’t have quite the bite they used to. Her eyes traced over the half of Gansey that was visible over the top of the table, and her cheekbones tinged just the lightest shade of pink.

Between his ex and best friend making eyes at one another and Ronan’s icy aloofness, Adam was seriously regretting his decision to come here tonight. He checked his watch ostentatiously and then prodded Blue’s shoulder.

“I’m working soon,” he explained, and she begrudgingly hauled herself back to her feet.

“Hope it’s better than dealing with these assholes,” she made no effort to lower her voice as she jerked a thumb in the direction of the Aglionby boys. They looked good-naturedly affronted by her rudeness, and Adam noticed Gansey noticing that one of them was indiscreetly checking Blue out. He also noted that Gansey’s face darkened a fraction.

“Let me out,” Ronan growled at Gansey, and he obliged rapidly, sidling up closer to Blue than was strictly necessary. She raised an eyebrow at him, but didn’t say anything.

Adam looked from Blue to Gansey and from Gansey to Ronan, and decided now was the time to run.

He was getting good at that, apparently.

He was only a few steps toward the door when he realized that Ronan was shadowing him.

He considered stopping, spinning around, confronting Ronan right now in front of all these people. Instead he steeled himself to keep walking.

And then they were out the door, Ronan still a menacing weight over his shoulder, just a hair too close for comfort.

Adam walked to his bike, unlocked it, considered swinging a leg over the seat and peddling away without turning to look at Ronan once.

But he was working on not being a coward anymore. _Man up, Parrish_ , he told himself sternly.

He rotated on the spot and looked up into Ronan’s face.

“What?” he asked, because there didn’t seem to be anything better to say.

Outside of the restaurant, Ronan looked less unapproachable, although that wasn’t saying much. Closing a switchblade didn’t make it any less liable to spring out and cut you if it fell into the wrong hands.

Adam was trying very hard to keep his hands to himself.

“What did you see.” It came out level and hard, not a question at all.

“Nothing,” Adam said quickly, then cursed himself when Ronan’s expression went utterly flat. Ronan hated lies.

“What did you see,” Ronan repeated. His brows drew down over his eyes, reducing them to shining blue slits. They gleamed malevolently down at Adam in the dusky half-light.

“Lynch—“

“I’m not asking nicely, Parrish. What. Did. You. See.”

“You and Kavinsky,” Adam said very quietly. He managed to keep his voice low because he knew the only other option was to scream. Somehow he didn’t think Ronan would respond very well to that.

“How much.”

“All of it,” Adam admitted. He fixed his gaze to the collar of Ronan’s sweater, then flushed and looked instead at the cracked pavement over his shoulder. The bruises on Ronan’s neck didn’t feel any less present just because he’d covered them up.

Ronan swore, a long and creative string encompassing several interesting new words and some compound phrasing that Adam found both appalling and compelling.

“I didn’t mean to,” he felt obliged to add.

“You didn’t _mean_ to be creeping around in K’s fucking bushes?” Ronan spat disbelievingly.

Adam was temporarily blindsided by Ronan’s use of the nickname. It wasn’t just Kavinsky anymore, it was _K_.

“I was looking for you,” he shot back, temper starting to rise in spite of himself. He finally met Ronan’s eyes. They were deep and pitiless, full of some barely contained emotion that Adam didn’t want to examine too closely. “You’d been gone for days, Gansey though you were _dead_.”

Ronan’s face went white. “You didn’t—“

“Tell him?” Adam barked out a mirthless laugh. “That you’ve been letting Kavinsky fuck you raw for the last four days?”

Ronan’s expression went from blinding panic to searing rage to shuttered vacancy faster than should have been humanly possible.

“Gansey doesn’t know,” Adam clarified.

Ronan turned on his heel and stalked back into the restaurant.


	3. Chapter 3

Adam couldn’t concentrate.

Objectively, he knew it was useless to try to keep working when he couldn’t pay any attention to what he was doing, but he still had ten minutes left on the clock.

He stared down at the punctured fuel line. He couldn’t fuck this up any worse than it already was, but his brain was full of a vacuous buzzing and every part of his body felt drawn out and limp from a late shift the night before.

Ten minutes had never gone by so slowly.

Finally, he started peeling off his grimy coveralls with two minutes to go, tying the arms around his waist while he cleaned up his workspace in the garage. Boyd never said anything if he left things lying around at the end of a long day, would cast him a knowing look with just too much pity in it for Adam’s liking.

He locked up before he left, proud that it was right on the dot. He didn’t like to cut out early, preferred to feel like he’d spent an honest day’s work and earned every cent. But sometimes moral superiority only got you so far.

He’d promised to see Gansey after work, and it wasn’t a long ride to Monmouth from the garage. He parked his bike out front, not bothering to lock it in the haze of his exhaustion, and felt himself sway a little as he opened the door.

“Shit,” he rested his forehead briefly against the wooden doorjamb, closed his eyes, breathed in the sultry Henrietta air. The smell of gasoline on his clothes and bush honeysuckle blooming optimistically in the cracks between old asphalt slabs, the crackling ozone scent of air before a storm. He tried to use the tangibility of the evening to anchor himself in his own body, even as the smell of moss and rich black earth tried to drag him to Cabeswater once again.

He pulled himself upright and entered, feet dragging on the stairs.

“Gansey?” he paused when he reached the model of Henrietta. All of the little cardboard buildings looking especially fragile in the waning evening light, their paper roofs gone translucent in the sun’s dying rays.

“He’s not here.”

Adam jumped, caught himself before he trampled a miniature gas station, and nearly fell sideways into the wall.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he swore vehemently, and whipped around.

Ronan was standing in the doorway to his room, sleek black headphones hooked around his neck, something with a throbbing bass beat pouring out of them to infuse the air around him.

“He and the maggot left,” Ronan was holding a paperback novel in his right hand, finger wedged between two pages to mark his place, and for some reason this struck Adam particularly. He wasn’t sure he’d ever seen Ronan willingly read before.

Ronan followed his gaze to the book, and a sardonic smile curled across his face, “Got a problem with my intellectual pursuits, Parrish?”

“I didn’t know you had any,” Adam sniped back, out of patience with this day. Where the fuck had Gansey gone to? And with Blue? Without either of them telling him?

Leaving Ronan here to deliver the message felt like a poor compromise.

Then again, neither of them knew what he did.

“You wound me,” Ronan said dispassionately. His tank top today was long and baggy, and one of the straps slipped down his arm as Adam stared at him. Ronan hitched his shoulder up, and Adam had the overwhelming urge to reach over and fix it for him. Never mind that he was standing all the way across the room, or that he and Ronan had fought the last time he’d seen him.

He looked away as Ronan reached up to pull his shirt straight, swallowing hard. He pressed his lips tight together as he fidgeted with the arms of his coveralls, pulling them more securely around his waist. He didn’t really know what to do—should he wait for Gansey to get back? Who knew how long he’d be, and Adam wasn’t really a fan of the idea of sitting here with a pissed off Ronan for an indefinable amount of time.

Not to mention the fact that whenever Adam closed his eyes at night all he could see was the pale expanse of Ronan’s back under Kavinsky’s hands, the choked off noise he made when he came.

When he looked up, he nearly startled again. Ronan had moved closer, quiet as Noah, and was regarding him silently. He’d dropped the book on a table near Gansey’s bed, and Adam was amused to see that it was a cheap spy thriller, the kind you’d pick up in the bargain bin at the grocery store.

“Intellectual, my ass,” he muttered, dropping his hands from the sleeves.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Ronan asked suddenly.

Adam stared at him.

“Why would I?” he said. He didn’t have to ask who.

“I don’t fucking know,” Ronan rasped, “knock me down another peg? Prove to Gansey what a fuck up I really am? Show him that all his concern got me was licking pills off K’s dick.”

Adam winced. He’d figured that Ronan must have done drugs with Kavinsky, but he hadn’t want to think about it too hard. He could easily picture Kavinsky cracking open a capsule, sprinkling sparkling white powder across himself, Ronan’s nose brushing fine hair as his tongue swiped over skin.

Ronan drunk was one thing; Adam didn’t want to know what he was like high on whatever Kavinsky was dealing these days.

“It isn’t any of Gansey’s business who you sleep with,” Adam said, the words ringing hollow in his ears. It wasn’t any of his either. So why the fuck did he care so much?

“Fucking rich,” Ronan said, and he slipped a finger around the edge of the headphones, dropped them to the floor so that the cord ripped out of his ipod and they left were in silence.

Some part of Adam felt that now was the time to apologize, to say he was sorry for being a voyeur, however unwilling, but he couldn’t do it. Instead he felt his temper rising, inexplicable and dizzying. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Ronan’s neck was bared now, five perfectly ovular bruises glaring malignantly from the column of his throat.

Ronan must have taken them off on purpose, knowing that Adam would look for them. Adam felt like this was a test, Ronan smashing buttons on the control panel trying to figure out what would make the wrecking ball fly.  

Knowing that didn’t make it any less effective.

They glared at one another, tension singing in the space between them, Ronan’s furious blue eyes sending sparks that he could feel burning reproachfully into him.

“Did you like it?” Adam spat. He couldn’t hold it in—it was the question that had been plaguing him this entire time. Had Ronan enjoyed being bent over the Mitsu, throttled to the edge of unconsciousness, his face a shockingly vivid shade of red by the time Kavinsky’s hands released him?

Ronan leaned in close, not breaking eye contact, contempt heavy in every line of his lithe body. There was something deep in the pools of his eyes that disquieted Adam. It looks suspiciously like self-loathing.

“Fuck yeah I did,” Ronan whispered, and smiled wickedly.

His breath fanned across Adam’s face, and Adam couldn’t explain why he thought what he did next was a good idea.

He reached up and pressed his hand to Ronan’s throat, forcing him back, pressing each of his fingers into the marks left by Kavinsky’s hand.

Neither of them breathed, held in the tenuous moment. Adam could feel the beat of Ronan’s heart feather light and fast against his palm, speeding up in time to Ronan’s breathing. His pupils had blown huge, the black practically swallowing blue, and his lips parted slightly. His tongue flicked out to wet the bottom one, and Adam watched, mesmerized, as it traced a shining path over pink flesh.

Then, so slightly that Adam might have missed it if he hadn’t been paying such exquisite attention, Ronan pressed forward into his touch.

Adam’s heart stopped, then resumed at double time. This was so surreal, and he couldn’t help it that all of the blood in his body rushed immediately south. Ronan’s eyes fell closed, long black lashes casting spidery shadows across the sharp cut of his cheekbones, and he pressed forward harder, his adam’s apple shifting against Adam’s hand.

Adam felt powerful and scared and so helplessly aroused that he couldn’t think straight. Ronan’s mouth was so close, and he didn’t think he’d ever wanted to taste anything as badly as he did Ronan’s lips.

_Bang_.

The commotion of Gansey and Blue’s arrival covered for them, but only barely. By the time Gansey had looked away from Blue’s face to scan the room for Adam, Ronan was halfway back to his bedroom. The slamming of his door held much less force when accompanied by Blue noisily kicking off her boots and dropping books to the floor by the door.

“Everything all right?” Gansey looked quizzically at Adam.

“Perfectly,” Adam said, and only turned to readjust himself when he was sure both Gansey and Blue were otherwise occupied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's not an exaggeration to say that comments and kudos make my day, so please don't hesitate to leave them! They're wonderful and they motivate me, so thank you ahead of time!!! <3 <3 <3 
> 
> I'm on tumblr, so come find me if you feel like it :-) [beersforqueers on tumblr](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)


	4. Chapter 4

Adam wasn't sure what was worse: Ronan being outright hostile, Ronan being cuttingly cruel, or Ronan pointedly ignoring him. He suspected that Gansey being solicitously concerned outdid all of these things.

_"_ Adam, I hope you know," Gansey flipped a few pages in his journal, trying to look studiously nonchalant, "that I’m here if there’s anything you want to talk about."

Adam waited a few seconds, knowing Gansey wasn't finished yet. The early afternoon light filtering through Monmouth’s massive windows backlit Gansey’s head, creating a dusty halo. He bent over his work, obviously trying not to push Adam too fast.

"If, for instance," he marked something down with small, precise lettering in the tiny space of a margin, "there was something going on with Ronan." He turned another page, then inserted a mint leaf into his mouth, "I like to think you’d feel ok telling me. You know, if you two are fighting again."

Ever the diplomat, Adam thought wryly, and yet so unprepared for the true extent of his conflict with Ronan. He was fairly certain that if he told Gansey everything that had happened, his perfectly coiffed head would explode.

He wouldn't want any of Gansey's hair product to go to waste--it probably cost more than his rent.

“Don’t worry about it,” he hedged instead, “it’ll be fine.”

“He disappears every time you walk into a room,” Gansey pointed out, looking troubled. “If he did something you’re uncomfortable with…”

“You have no idea,” Adam said under his breath, then looked up when Gansey made a shocked noise. “What?” he asked. Gansey’s eyes were wide, his fingers twisting anxiously in the lap of his immaculately pressed khakis.

“You have to understand,” Gansey laid his pen carefully to the side of his journal, “that Ronan isn’t as resilient as he likes to believe. I think that Niall probably taught him some messed up stuff about being gay. And I know the last thing he’d want was for you to feel awkward about his feelings, and I know you don’t care that he isn’t straight, but if you really feel weird about him being interested, I suppose I could talk to him and see—“

“Gansey, take a breath,” Adam interrupted. “What the _hell_ are you talking about?”

“Ronan’s feelings for you,” Gansey said automatically.

“His feelings of anger?” Adam asked, but he could feel his face flushing hot and embarrassed at Gansey’s words. He knew exactly what Gansey was talking about, but he wasn’t about to articulate it himself.

“Adam,” Gansey said hotly, “you’re the best in our year, I _know_ you know what I mean. Ronan has romantic feelings for you, and I know you’re straight, but—“

“I never said that,” Adam muttered, blush intensifying.

“Oh,” Gansey sat back, obviously flabbergasted but trying to recover himself, “well then.”

“It’s not anything serious,” Adam whispered. He had been peripherally aware of Ronan’s interest before now, but it had never felt like more than an appreciation. Wanting Adam was very different from wanting to _be_ with Adam, and he wasn’t stupid enough to confuse which one Ronan was after. Not that he was pursuing him at all, really. Or ever would, after everything that had happened the last week.

“Your bisexuality?” Gansey said carefully.

“No, god, Gansey,” Adam said, probably sounding whiny. This wasn’t something he really wanted to discuss with him—it felt like having a sex talk with a self-conscious older relative. Or what he assumed that would have felt like if he’d actually experienced it.

“Ronan’s feelings?” Gansey’s brows drew down, and he absentmindedly ran his thumb along his lower lip.

“Yeah,” Adam said, relieved that they weren’t talking about him anymore. At least Ronan thinking he was—what, cute? hot? marginally attractive?— was more familiar territory. Not that he’d been obsessing about it, because he hadn’t.

“I’m not sure what you mean by that,” Gansey said slowly. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen him take notice of anyone, besides, you know,” he squared his shoulders and said roughly, “Joseph Kavinsky.”

The bottom of Adam’s stomach dropped away, leaving a yawning hole in his abdomen.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s just physical,” Adam said before he could stop himself.

“I don’t think he feels the same way about the two of you,” Gansey said quietly. “He looks at you differently. I’m not sure how to explain it.”

“The way you look at Blue,” Adam provided helpfully.

He hadn’t really meant to draw that out into the open, but Gansey’s shocked breath showed that he’d heard and recognized the comment for what it was. Adam trying to clear the air in more ways than one, apparently.

And it helped that it distracted Gansey from trying to psychoanalyze Ronan any more than he already had. He’d left Adam with plenty of things to think about as it was.

“I don’t mind,” Adam said truthfully. Sometimes it stung a little, he had to admit that even to himself. The way Blue instinctively leaned toward Gansey in the booth at Nino’s, how his eyes tracked her movement across a room, the bright light in his eyes when someone mentioned her name. “We’re not together. We never really were.”

“That’s not to say, I mean, we’re not, she and I,” Gansey floundered, and it was his turn to blush pink under Adam’s scrutiny.

“It’s ok,” Adam assured him, and Gansey stilled, eyes fixed to his Glendower journal.

“All right then,” Gansey murmured, and Adam turned back to the book in front of him on the table, welcome for the distraction.

They fell into silence, and it didn’t feel as fraught as it could have. Part of Adam felt he could breathe easier now; he’d cleared away some of what he’d been meaning to say to Gansey, and he genuinely hoped both he and Blue would be happy. That could be true even if it still twinged.

It wasn’t until evening that Adam thought about leaving. Noah had popped in periodically to sit on Gansey’s desk chair and spin in frenetic circles, Ronan was off doing god knew what, and Adam had Cabeswater business to attend to before bed.

“I’ll see you later?” he said, standing up.

“Yes,” Gansey said distractedly, then looked up as Adam pushed his chair in, “and thank you.”

Adam held his gaze for a few seconds before nodding. “Of course.”

Outside the air was warm and clear, smelling like fertile soil and wet blacktop. It had stormed yesterday, cutting the humidity so that even the heat felt more manageable.

He was just starting to cross the parking lot when he heard it. The feral rumble of the engine slowing to a deep purr, the smooth slide of an automatic window being rolled down, and then, “Hey Princess, wanna go for a ride?”

He turned slowly. Kavinsky was looking at him over the top of his stupid white sunglasses, a Cheshire cat grin splitting his face maniacally in two.

“No,” he said shortly, and started moving again.

“Don’t be a bitch,” Kavinsky pouted, “we got shit to discuss. Come play before mommy comes home to ruin the fun.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments! Kudos! I love these things! They are delightful and wonderful and make me happy.
> 
>  
> 
> [I'm on tumblr!](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)


	5. Chapter 5

“I don’t need to hear about your mommy issues, Kavinsky,” Adam stopped, fists clenching open and closed, willing himself not to turn back around. He heard a car door open behind him and the sound of uneven footsteps on cement.

 _Shit_.

“Fucking sick, man, I was talking about Lynch,” Kavinsky’s voice was closer now. Adam looked over his shoulder; he’d come around the other side of his car and was leaning against it. He looked strung out and jittery, hands twitching until he tucked them into his pockets, fingering at a lump in his pocket.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Adam said, but he didn’t move either.

“Don’t wanna hear what?” Kavinsky cocked his head to the side and pulled his hand back out of his pocket, the baggie of white powder pinched between his fingers unmistakable. “You mind?” he grinned, then turned around and lovingly tapped a line out onto the white paint. From this distance the cocaine was indistinguishable from the exterior, but Adam watched with queasy fascination as Kavinsky snorted it, forefinger pressing his other nostril delicately closed.

“Want some?” he pulled his sunglasses off and squinted at Adam in the dimming light—his pupils were tiny pinpricks. Adam shook his head mutely. “K, whatever,” he said, then, “so back to business.”

“The fuck do you want?” Adam demanded. This felt strangely familiar. Here he was, willing himself to leave but cemented to the spot, unable to turn away from the train wreck.

“You and Lynch?” Kavinsky rubbed a finger through the chalky residue on the car and then across his gums, “not gonna be a fucking thing, shitstain. You can fuck right off.”

“You want to talk to me about _boys_?” Adam asked incredulously. This wasn’t real. Maybe he _had_ accepted the drugs and he was hallucinating this entire interaction.

Kavinsky’s lip curled, “It’s me and Lynch, bitch. Thought you oughta know before you did something dumb.”

“Like what?” Adam honestly couldn’t come up with any ideas about what might qualify as ‘dumb’ in Kavinsky’s coke-addled brain.

“He may be a fucking slut,” Kavinsky said casually, “but his ass is mine. Don’t think he’d give me up for—“ he gestured at Adam, “—whatever the fuck _that_ is.”

“Excuse me?” Adam took a step closer, rage simmering under the surface of his skin. It made everything swim a little bit out of focus, Kavinsky’s face sliding in and out under a bright red haze.

“You couldn’t keep up,” Kavinsky shrugged impatiently, looking Adam over like he was worth nothing, just some trailer trash brat Ronan must have found by the side of the road. “You aren’t like him.”

“So what, I’m unworthy of Ronan because I _just don’t get what you two have_?” Adam spat viciously. He didn’t even know why he was rising to this, why he gave a shit what Kavinsky thought, why it would piss him off that anyone would think he wasn’t capable of being with Ronan. “Because it’s some big fucking love or something? You gonna get married and move to a house in the suburbs, Kavinsky? No, you’ll be _dead_ by 22, and Ronan will have moved on with his life.”

Kavinsky barked a short laugh, obviously surprised and enjoying it. He clapped sarcastically before sliding his sunglasses back onto his face. He looked inscrutable and dangerous wearing them in the waning light, like a gangster about to head out into the night to dump a body.

“Better than I thought, Parrish,” he crowed. “But you don’t got what he needs.”

“Oh? And what’s that? Drugs? A choking fetish? A death wish?” Adam asked, anger starting to boil over until he thought it might split his skin and come pouring out of him.

“I got the same stuff in me,” Kavinsky said, tapping his head with a finger. “I’ve been in his head, man. I’ve shoved my dick so far up that pretty little whore ass that he could tast **e** —“

 _Wham_.

Adam barely felt his fist connecting with Kavinsky’s face, wasn’t sure when he’d charged across the lot and thrown himself at him. All he knew was that the second Kavinsky started talking about Ronan like that, like he was an object, something for Kavinsky to chop up and snort and use until he was gone… All of the pain and frustration had ignited like gasoline, searing him from the inside out.

“ _Adam!_ ”

There were hands on him— _fucking Gansey_ he thought savagely to himself—prying him off of Kavinsky, pulling him away.

“Let go, Gansey, you didn’t hear him, you didn’t,” Adam fought against him, fucking incensed that Kavinsky was stumbling upright, fingers trying to staunch his bleeding nose. _I did that_ Adam rejoiced, feeling horribly disconnected from his body. “Hear what he said about Ronan, _fuck!_ ” he swore, and managed to get one of his arms free.

“Get in your fucking car, man,” came the voice again, and Adam heard it properly for the first time. Kavinsky was revving the Mitsu, pealing out onto the street, just taillights in the distance now.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Adam heard Ronan swearing vehemently as he manhandled Adam into the BMW. Adam didn’t fight him now, too shocked by his presence to give him any shit about being able to get himself home. He hadn’t even seen him pull up, too focused on punching every bit of Kavinsky he could get his hands on.

 _Oh god_ , he’d hit him. He’d tried to beat the shit out of him. He’d let his anger get the better of him. His chest went tight, and he bent forward at the waist, retching out the side of the car.

He didn’t bring anything up, but he felt revolted, shame gnawing at his stomach as he slammed the door shut.

“Fucking hell, man,” Ronan threw the car into gear and whipped them out into the night, speeding in the direction of St. Agnes. “Breathe, ok, just fucking keep breathing,” he sounded alarmed, “now is when you choose to start having fucking panic attacks, the _fuck_ , Adam.”

Dimly Adam recognized that Ronan always said his first name surprisingly gently, like it was precious and breakable. ‘Parrish’ was for fighting, ‘Adam’ was for…something else entirely.

He tried to breathe, but his lungs were constricting, his brain a fog of panic, like someone had turned up the white noise dial to maximum volume. It crowded out all rational thought, all calm emotion, and he had to sink down and hang his head between his knees again.

He didn’t notice the car had stopped until Ronan was at his door, wrenching it open and hauling him out. He was stronger than he looked; he practically carried Adam up the stairs to his apartment, rifling through his pockets carefully until he found his keys and let them inside.

“Bed,” he said tersely, and Adam sunk down onto the edge of his shitty mattress, taking great gulps of air. He hung his head and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, then started when they came away wet.

“Shit,” he whispered as Ronan’s feet came into view, his hand thrusting a glass of water into Adam’s. “You should go, I’m not—don’t look at this—“

“I’m not leaving,” Ronan said firmly. He felt the mattress dip as Ronan’s weight depressed it. He was just close enough for Adam to feel the warmth of him, but far enough to give him some space.

“I’m turning into him,” Adam said after a few moments of nothing but ragged breathing.

“No you fucking aren’t,” Ronan said, and something in his voice made Adam turn and look at him fully for the first time. He was staring at Adam intensely, blue eyes bright with fury. “Don’t ever say that again. Don’t ever _think_ it, Parrish. You are _nothing_ like him.”

“I hit him,” Adam said dumbly, taken aback by the force of Ronan’s reaction. “I got so angry that I couldn’t hold it in, and I punched him. I think I broke his nose,” he stared back down at his long-fingered hands, curled loose and quiescent in his lap. How had they been capable of such a thing?

He suddenly hated them, wanted to clench them until they cracked under the pressure, but the gesture made him think of losing control again.

It was like Ronan could tell what he was thinking, and he reached out, telegraphing his movements so he didn’t scare Adam. He took Adam’s hands, turning them over so that his palms were up, each hand cradled softly in one of Ronan’s.

“You didn’t hurt anyone but yourself,” he said quietly. He wasn’t looking at Adam, but suddenly Adam couldn’t look away from him. “Anyone in their right mind would punch Kavinsky. He fucking asks for it.”

Adam didn’t say anything to that. There was something about being this close to Ronan that calmed him down, made all of the storming emotions inside of his head settle like silt, quickly swept away.

“What did he say about me?” Ronan asked. Adam could tell it wasn’t easy for him to ask, but that he wouldn’t have if he didn’t want the answer.

“He was acting like you were his _thing_ ,” Adam said furiously. “That it was you and him, and you’d never, that I wasn’t,” he stumbled over his words. “He said some shit about you, you know, being easy or whatever.” Better to skate over the actual words Kavinsky had used; he didn’t think Ronan needed to hear that.

“Thanks for defending my honor, Parrish,” Ronan said, releasing his hands. He had an oddly flat expression on his face, and he didn’t meet Adam’s eye.

“I shouldn’t have told you,” Adam said quietly.

“I asked.”

“Well then you shouldn’t have asked if you didn’t want to hear it,” Adam snapped.

For a second it looked like Ronan might fire back, but then he shook his head and glared at Adam. “Go to sleep,” he said instead. He stripped off his jacket and tossed it onto the ground, kicked his shoes off, tugged the threadbare blanket off the end of Adam’s bed.

He made to settle on the floor, but Adam grabbed him by the forearm. The apartment was small enough that he didn’t even have to stand to do it, just reach out and suddenly he was touching Ronan again. He pretended that didn’t send a shiver down his spine.

“You can sleep on the bed,” he said.

“Floor’s good enough,” Ronan said, and the corner of his mouth twitched up wryly.

“No, c’mon,” Adam insisted, and stood up. He was very close to Ronan, their bodies a hairsbreadth apart. He stepped back first, but gestured to the bed. It was a double, big enough for both of them to squeeze onto side by side.

He escaped to the bathroom before Ronan could give him a final answer, brushed his teeth and stripped to his boxers and tee shirt, stared at himself in the mirror for a few seconds while he steeled himself to go back out into his room. He looked terrible, like he hadn’t slept in days, and he remembered belatedly that he didn’t have work tomorrow. Maybe he’d even sleep in.

 _Ha_ he thought mirthlessly to himself. He still had things to do, errands he’d let pile up or needed to get done for the next week. And he had Ronan, Gansey, and now fucking Kavinsky to contend with.

He nearly froze when he walked back into the bedroom. Ronan was spread out shirtless on his bed, one arm thrown carelessly over his head, face turned toward the wall. His dark jeans were riding down to expose a strip of underwear waistband, and for some reason nothing had ever looked so appealing in Adam’s life. He had to work up the courage to approach his own bed.

He slid in next to Ronan, careful not to disturb him, but his head lolled to the other side as Adam lay down. He didn’t say anything, just regarded Adam with sleepy blue eyes, and Adam found himself wondering how long it had been since Ronan had let himself sleep.

“Good night,” he whispered, and shut off the light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 you guys, thanks so much for reading! It's a lot of fun to hear from you all, and I'm so glad you're enjoying
> 
> I'm on tumblr! [beersforqueers](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Also! So much thanks to MrsGuinevere for being literally the first person to ask me to keep writing, and for being willing to beta the last few chapters (and all of the ones I've sent her since. There have been quite a few...).


	6. Chapter 6

This was a very strange dream.

Ordinarily Adam dreamt in anxious splashes of sensation and color, of laconic green leaves unfurling with time-lapse speed to wrap around his throat, of rustling bushes nipping their twiggy branches at his ankles. Recently, as he became more attuned to Cabeswater, they’d become calmer, clearer, sunlit glades and perfect rows of marching chestnuts, sparkling stones at the bottom of crystalline brooks.

This wasn’t like that. This felt vivid as reality, warm and tangible and achingly familiar.

“You don’t usually look this perfect,” came a voice behind him.

He wheeled around. He was standing in the middle of a field at the Barns, and everything was lush and glittering, and the air smelled like warm soil after a summer storm. Ronan was standing in the knee-high grass, regarding him quizzically.

He wasn’t the real Ronan, though. Adam was sure of that, wasn’t he? Ronan wasn’t this loose and happy in real life—the self-loathing and destruction he carried around with him like a miasma was gone, replaced by a certain lightness. This was Ronan as Adam imagined he must have been before his father died, before his mother became comatose, before his relationship with Declan splintered apart.

This was Adam’s dream, the version of Ronan he wished he’d known. The one he thought must still be inside him somewhere.

Or maybe that was ridiculous. That Ronan wasn’t dark or complicated or sarcastically funny. He wasn’t ineffably kind or startlingly tender.

That Ronan didn’t want Adam.

Adam crossed to him before he stopped to consider. Wading through the grass was like parting the sea, each step laborious until it wasn’t. The grass was separating smoothly in front of him, and he blinked down at it.

Well, it was a dream. Anything could happen.

He looked back up at Ronan, who looked amused now.

“Come on, dream thing,” he said. “What have you got planned for me tonight?”

“Nothing,” he said automatically. “Whatever you want.” Surely his night would be much more interesting if he let his subconscious take over.

“You’re never this accommodating,” Ronan smiled. “I don’t want to take advantage.”

“Take as much as you like,” he said. He wasn’t sure what made him so bold, but then again, this was a fairly risk-free operation. He wasn’t like Ronan; nothing would follow him out of this fantasy.

“You _would_ say that,” Ronan said, and if Adam wasn’t mistaken, it sounded almost sad.

On impulse he reached out and took Ronan’s hand. It was big and warm and callused, everything he remembered from earlier that night. It fit his with an uncanny rightness, and he linked their fingers together securely.

“Take me anywhere,” Adam said more firmly.

“We won’t go far,” Ronan said, and pulled him along beside him. The field was sloped, and they walked down the hill, blades of grass sighing as they parted to let them pass.

“I like it here,” Adam confessed, breathing in the sweet scent of living things.

“Me too,” Ronan chuckled, low and warm. “I like being here with you.”

Adam let himself be led until they reached a huge tree on the edge of a cow pasture. It was old and weathered, with leathery bark, and a broad canopy of deep emerald leaves. A rope ladder hung down the side, and when Adam tilted his head back he saw that it led up to a platform high above.

“After you,” Ronan waved at the ladder.

Adam hadn’t ever been in a tree house in his life, but this felt like the perfect one. The rope was thick and sturdy, its wooden rungs worm smooth by small hands. The platform that it led to held a tiny wooden structure with a railing all the way around, and the ladder could be pulled up to fortify against intruders.

By the time Ronan joined him, he had settled on the edge of the platform, legs dangling over the side between the slats of the railing.

“This was one of my favorite places as a kid,” Ronan said simply. “I thought you’d want to see it.”

“I do. It’s amazing,” Adam said. He wanted to take Ronan’s hand again, and so he did. He was enjoying the simplicity of this dream. He didn’t have to obfuscate or pretend, he didn’t have to worry about whether or not he was allowed to touch. Everything was friendly and joyful, from the cows grazing in the distance to the Ronan sitting beside him.

“Can I have this all the time?” Ronan asked him. He looked unbearably wistful.

“Of course you can,” Adam said, not bothering to add the _Inside my head_. It was a little odd, he thought, that considering he’d created a happier Ronan, he looked so forlorn right now. What would cheer him up? “You can have whatever you want.”

“Not you, though,” Ronan said. “Not in the real world.”

Adam chewed his lip at that, staring at their hands intertwined on the warped boards between them. “I don’t know,” Adam said, his mind catching on a wild, frightening idea. He could do whatever he wanted, try anything here. There were no consequences at all. “But you could have me here.”

But Ronan was shaking his head, looking suddenly chagrined. “No, nothing like that,” he said. “Nothing sexual. Not like this.”

“Why not?” Adam got up on his knees, turning his body into Ronan’s. “It seems sort of perfect. I don’t know whether…I mean, theoretically,” he put his free hand on dream-Ronan’s shoulder. “I could see how it felt. Being with you,” he clarified. This felt very pragmatic, in a way. “You don’t want to date me anyway. But if you want me, you can have me here.”

“Don’t want to date you?” Ronan’s brow drew down in confusion. “Parrish, you’re an idiot even in dreams.”

Adam was thrown. This sounded shockingly like the Ronan he knew, and it was discomfiting.

“That’s all I want,” Ronan reached up and pressed his palm to Adam’s cheek, and Adam felt like it was on fire. Ronan’s thumb was brushing the edge of his lips, and suddenly all he wanted was to turn his head and suck it into his mouth. “Just you.”

“So maybe you have a crush,” Adam shrugged, trying to be reasonable even with Ronan touching him. “That doesn’t make it serious.”

“I’m very serious,” Ronan growled, and his hand curled around the back of Adam’s neck and yanked him closer. “I don’t _get_ crushes. This isn’t some schoolyard bullshit, Adam. I’m not yanking your pigtails or stealing your notebook. And I don’t just want to fuck you, either.” He released Adam’s hand and placed his palm flat over Adam’s heart. Adam was struck again by how _real_ everything felt in this dream. “ I think I’m in fucking love with you.”

Adam couldn’t really breathe. This dream had taken a turn he hadn’t anticipated, and it was sending him reeling. If dream-Ronan was saying these things to him, if this was what his subconscious spat back out at him from his own churning mess of emotions, what did that mean?

Did he want Ronan to love him?

Did _he_ love Ronan?

“So why won’t you kiss me?” he asked instead.

“Because you aren’t real,” Ronan said simply. “I’m not exploiting dream-you. That’s just creepy.”

“But you aren’t real either,” Adam laughed. “So what does it matter?”

“Of course I’m real,” Ronan said. The grip on the back of Adam’s neck tightened a little, and then he was nose-to-nose with Ronan, dominating his entire field of vision. Everything was Ronan. “Whose dream do you think this is?”

“I don’t think I know anymore,” Adam said honestly, even though it was hard to think with Ronan drowning out all his senses. He felt like a tuning rod perfectly calibrated to Ronan’s frequency. One pluck of Ronan’s finger and he was ready to vibrate apart. “But it’s a good one.”

“It is,” Ronan agreed. “I’m glad I finally got to say that.”

“What?”

“That I love you.”

“Oh,” Adam said, and the words, even from this not-real Ronan, made his entire heart clench and then release, sucking tension from his body, “well I don’t know if I love you back, but I think I could.”

“Of course you’d say that,” Ronan rumbled, and let him go. Adam sat back down next to him, laid his head back on his shoulder. They held hands again, stroking thumbs over the backs of one another’s hands. They sat like that until the light in the dream began to fade and fireflies began to pop into existence across the landscape, and Adam knew it was almost time to wake up.

He didn’t want to leave Dream-Ronan, and as a firefly buzzed by, he snatched it out of the air. He opened his hand to inspect it and stared—it wasn’t an insect at all, but a tiny ball of light, smooth and cool to the touch, but burning brightly inside its orb. He held it out to Ronan in wonder.

“Welcome to my dreams,” Ronan laughed at the expression on his face and reached for it. As his hand closed around it, Adam felt himself begin to fade.

He came together slowly, sinking into the feeling of wakefulness, very aware of his own body on the bed. His ankle was overlapped with Ronan’s, who was stirring next to him. He rolled over to look at him, his slightly parted lips, his fluttering lashes, the flat expanse of his stomach.

He reached out with one finger and traced down the inside of Ronan’s forearm where it lay stretched out on the bed next to him. He knew Ronan was waking up, and he didn’t want to be caught doing this, but Ronan’s hand twitched and opened beneath his finger.

In his palm, sheltered by the curve of his fingers, lay a tiny, glowing sphere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr!](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/) I love being prompted, etc., so if there's anything you'd really like to see written, send me an ask or a message or whatever works for you.
> 
> Again, thanks to MrsGuinevere for beta-ing and being so generally patient with me while I've been sick and trying to get through this story! It's been lots of fun to write and I hope to read as well 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's been a lot of stress in my life lately, so here's a chapter. Having comments and kudos in my inbox when I wake up always makes me happy, so here's to that helping get me through midterms!

Adam’s first impulse was to rocket up out of the bed, escape what he’d just seen, but the last thing he wanted was to jerk Ronan awake. Even after the serenity of their shared dream, who knew what he might accidentally drag out with him.

Instead he slid carefully out of the bed, mindful not to disturb Ronan, and tiptoed quickly to the bathroom. Once inside, he locked the door and sank down onto the lid of the toilet, drawing his legs up to his chest.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” he whispered to himself, thumping his forehead onto his knees. He’d unwittingly invaded Ronan’s dreams, tried to get him to make out with him, gotten him to fucking confess his _love_. Was that unethical? Could you hold a waking person to something they said while they were asleep? Could anything be consensual in a dream?

Adam supposed that must be the root of Ronan’s hesitance. What had he said? “Nothing sexual, not like this.”

Adam had fucked up, and Ronan didn’t even know it.

He got up, brushed his teeth, tried to think this through. He could hear Ronan stirring beyond the door, sheets sliding and then the _thud_ of Ronan’s feet hitting the worn floorboard.

There was a tap at the door of the bathroom.

“Hurry up, Parrish, I gotta take a leak,” Ronan grumbled through the door, and Adam opened it automatically. Ronan shouldered his way past him and unzipped his fly shamelessly.

“What the fuck, _Ronan_ ,” Adam said, scandalized.

“Nothing you haven’t seen before,” Ronan grinned over at him, and Adam was so surprised that he laughed. He didn’t think he’d ever hear Ronan make a joking reference to the Kavinsky incident.

Something small and pulsating whizzed over his head, skidding to a smooth stop above Ronan.

“What the…?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ronan tucked himself back into his pants and squinted up at the tiny ball of light. “I had an accident.”

“Right,” Adam said. He stared at the sphere for a few more seconds, trying to ignore the strange look Ronan was giving him.

“At least it wasn’t a night terror,” Ronan shrugged.

“Was that a risk last night?” Adam said casually. His heart was beating anxiously hard while he waited for Ronan’s answer.

“Not really,” Ronan said with equal nonchalance. His eyes slid sideways to Adam’s face, and his brow crinkled. He looked like he was trying to work through something confusing.

“Cool. Glad you, um,” Adam was not making this any less obvious, “had a good night’s sleep.”

“Thanks,” Ronan said quietly.

They stood awkwardly in the bathroom for another second before Adam thought to flee. He was dragging on fresh clothes by the time Ronan wandered out behind him.

“Used your toothbrush,” Ronan told him, and Adam groaned.

“Really, Ronan?”

“Yeah, and it was minty fresh,” Ronan smirked.

Adam pulled his shirt the rest of the way on and tried to look Ronan up and down as subtly as possible. He was in a strangely good mood, whistling as he sprawled on the ground to lace his boots up. By some miracle, it wasn’t even the murder squash song.

“Whatcha doin today?”

Adam, caught up in his own thoughts, just shrugged.

“Come to The Barns,” Ronan said, and although it should have been a question, he didn’t phrase it as one.

Adam hesitated, some part of his brain whispering that he had things to do today.

“Yeah, ok,” he said instead.

 

* * *

 

 

They didn’t talk on the drive over. Adam kept his gaze firmly ahead, watching the twisting road as the car wound its way toward Singer’s Falls.

It was a beautiful day out and Ronan rolled the windows down and blasted something that actually sounded like music for once. Adam dropped his head back and just _breathed_ , enjoying the wind running cool fingers through his hair. He felt a sensation like laughter bubbling up in his chest, but it would be strange to start giggling right then, and he tamped down on the impulse. In the periphery of his vision he saw Ronan flick a quizzical smile in his direction, but neither of them said anything.

They crunched onto the gravel driveway and sped up toward the house, and as soon as they were parked, Ronan was out of the car. He stood looking expectantly at Adam through the windshield while Adam fumbled to undo his seatbelt and clamber out after him.

“So, magician, any problems with getting dirty?” Ronan asked gleefully, leading Adam toward the house.

Adam rolled his eyes at him, which made Ronan grin. Ronan was smiling a lot today, an occurrence that would ordinarily have put Adam on edge. Instead it made his entire chest fill with warmth.

“Which of my jobs strikes you as particularly clean?” he shot back.

“Fair,” Ronan held up a finger, “point to Parrish.”

Ronan veered around the side of the house, following a dirt track through the bushes, which were in full bloom in the summer heat. They arrived in the backyard, and Ronan walked purposefully toward a shed sheltered under a canopy of drooping magnolia trees.

Adam was distracted, however, by the rolling landscape that fell away to his left. He could just make out, at the edge of a distant cow pasture, an enormous tree rising out of the sea of grass. A rope ladder swung unmistakably from its branches.

“Parrish,” Ronan called, jolting him back to the real world.

He turned and followed him, helped him haul open its rusty doors. The interior was full of junk: corroded farming equipment and heaps of feedbags, stacks of paint cans and piles of matted brushes, stacks of lumber and a jumble of dusty tools.

“Paint stripper,” Ronan said, and thrust a giant bottle of toxic orange liquid into Adam’s arms. “Don’t inhale that shit,” he warned, “it’ll get you super fucked.”

“Great,” Adam said wryly, and accepted a facemask next. “I always like my chores with a side of accidental-intoxication.”

“Don’t shit on it till you’ve tried it,” Ronan snapped a mask into place on his own face and grabbed a brush and scraper.

They spent the day fixing up the shed. While the stripper set they heaved unsalvageable machinery out to the driveway, then scraped all the old paint off so that they could repaint. Ronan le **a** nt Adam a ratty shirt he found in the mudroom, then used that as license to flick paint all over him. Adam retaliated by turning the hose on Ronan, who slipped and went down snarling and swearing into the slick grass.

“You’re fucking devious, Parrish,” Ronan muttered, yanking his sopping shirt off over his head to wring out. Adam, who hadn’t been anticipating how distracting it would be to see Ronan’s clothes plastered wetly to his chest, looked away abashedly. His gaze wandered over the fields, and he realized with a start that the sun was setting over the trees.

“I should head back,” he said quietly, and Ronan stilled beside him, pale hands still tight around his damp shirt.

“Stay the night,” he said lightly. “I’ll make dinner.”

“You,” Adam cocked an eyebrow at him. “Cooking.”

“Yeah, asshole, I can boil spaghetti,” Ronan shot him a routine glare.

“Fine,” Adam said, and didn’t think about why the idea of spending another night with Ronan made his whole body feel hot.

 

* * *

 

 

Dinner wasn’t bad, and Adam was a little bit impressed in spite of himself. Afterward they sprawled out on a couch in the living room, Ronan’s hand wrapped around a beer, his thumb idly scratching at the paper label. He kept shooting Adam subtle looks over the top of it, and Adam pretended not to notice.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever really spent this much uninterrupted time with Ronan before, and he was surprised by how normal it felt. He could tell that Ronan felt fidgety, that he was holding back something that he wanted to say, but he was content to let it come out in its own time.

He had too many things he was keeping contained within himself to judge Ronan’s reticence.

He did wonder, though, whether he would ever get used to being the object of Ronan’s attention and desire. It sat strangely with him at the best of times, but lately that strangeness was being supplanted by something else entirely. He was scared to put words to it, especially after Ronan’s unwitting confessions last night. He was still turning over the idea of Ronan’s love in his mind.

Being wanted was one thing, but having someone want to _be_ with him felt even more foreign and dangerous.

“If Kavinsky comes near you again, I’ll kick his ass,” Ronan said suddenly. “He can’t say shit like that.”

“Like what?” Adam asked, although he remembered all too well the profanity Kavinsky had spewed about Ronan.

“That it’s me and him. Like I couldn’t be with anyone else,” Ronan cut his eyes away from Adam’s face, took a quick swig of his beer.

“You definitely deserve better than Joseph Kavinsky,” Adam said, lip curling derisively.

“I don’t deserve some things,” Ronan said. He looked furtively at Adam.

“That’s not true,” Adam said quietly.

Ronan’s cheeks pinked a little. “Ok,” he said, and took another swallow of his beer. “It was, you know, physical,” he renewed his interest in tearing at the frayed label. “I don’t really give a fuck about him.”

“It would be ok if you did,” Adam said.

“Yeah, well,” Ronan shrugged jerkily, “he’s not a good person. He’s not good for me anyway. He makes me do dumb shit.”

“Depends on what counts as dumb,” Adam smiled a little, “I seem to remember you dragging me behind the BMW on a skateboard at least once.”

Ronan grinned, and it was like the sun breaking through the clouds in the middle of a thunderstorm. Warm and startling and beautiful.

“Ok, he makes me do _bad_ dumb shit,” he amended.

“You must have been getting something out of it,” Adam said carefully. He knew that Ronan knew exactly what he was thinking of.

“I needed someone to treat me like shit because I felt like shit,” Ronan said, and Adam had to replay his words to make sure he’d heard them right. It was a shockingly self-aware statement to be coming from Ronan. “He fulfilled his purpose.” He finished off his beer and dropped the empty to the floor. It rolled under the couch.

“No, don’t,” Adam leaned forward to retrieve the bottle and overbalanced, nearly falling off the couch. Ronan caught him, holding his arm delicately in his grip so that Adam was suspended over him, chest to chest, twisted awkwardly with Adam half-off the couch. “Um,” Adam said articulately.

Ronan was very close to him, and his blue eyes looked wide and dark in the dim living room light. His cheeks flushed pink, chest rising and falling, lips slightly parted just out of reach.

Adam’s eyes flashed down to Ronan’s mouth and caught there, and after last night, after everything that Ronan had said and Adam had realized, he thought for one wild moment about leaning down to taste them.

He was so mesmerized that he didn’t notice that they’d started moving.

“Huh?” Adam said dazedly.

“Let’s go to bed,” Ronan whispered.

All they did was sleep, Adam in Declan’s room, Ronan in his childhood bed, and as Adam fell asleep, he wondered whether he should have insisted otherwise. He wondered what had made him share that dream with Ronan, and whether sleeping in close proximity was a factor. The Greywaren and the Magician, their minds and bodies as close as two people could be, and he smiled a little to himself at that thought. Kavinsky might have been inside of Ronan’s head first, but Adam was there for good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [tumblr!](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)
> 
>  
> 
> And thanks to MrsGuinevere for the beta!


	8. Chapter 8

Adam hadn’t set an alarm, and Adam was fucking _late_.

“Ronan!” he slammed his way into Ronan’s room at what was still an ungodly hour, and then promptly leapt back out of the doorway. Ronan was sleeping completely naked on top of his covers, and by the looks of it, he was having a _very_ good dream.

“Jesus Christ,” Adam swore, leaning against the wall by Ronan’s still-open door. The fuck was this morning?

“Adam?” Ronan’s voice was foggy with sleep. “Oh shit fucking hell,” floated through the door, and then a strange rattling buzzing sound, like a cloud of angry bees trapped in a tin can.

“Can I borrow your car? Or something?” Adam gritted out, trying to resist the urge to peek back into Ronan’s room. Even the brief image of Ronan’s supine body atop the crisp white comforter was burned across the inside of his eyelids. There had been miles of pale bare skin, the proud jut of his cock flush against his abdomen, and Adam really did _not_ need to get hard right now. What he _needed_ was to have left for work twenty minutes ago.

“No, damn, I’ll drive you, _shit_ ,” there were several thuds and the sound of a drawer being wrenched out of a bureau, and then Ronan was in the hallway with him. He was mercifully clothed. “The garage?” he threw back over his shoulder, already halfway down the stairs.

“Yeah,” Adam ran down the stairs after him and they both careened through the front door, landing in the BMW in a pile of frantic limbs. Ronan was reversing out of the drive almost before Adam had his door closed, and Adam threw himself back into his seat, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. He was trying to calm down, talk himself off the cliff that his mind had conjured up, where he was five minutes late and consequently lost every single one of his jobs.

Ronan didn’t even bother to turn on the radio, concentrating hard on the road as they shot down it at record-breaking speeds. It wasn’t the same silence as the previous morning, when everything had felt light and welcoming. This morning a heavy tension permeated the air, and Adam wondered distractedly if it had to do with how close they’d come to kissing last night. How close Adam had been to finally being brave when it came to Ronan.

They made it with a minute to spare, and Adam barely had time to rush out garbled thanks to Ronan as he wrenched his door open.

“It’s fine, just go,” Ronan said, and when Adam took a last look at him, he was staring straight ahead, eyes distant, his jaw clenched hard. His expression looked determined, but Adam couldn’t spare the time to muddle through what he might be resolving to do.

Knowing Ronan, he’d find out sooner rather than later anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

Work went by fast that day, like time was trying to keep up with the whirring speed of Adam’s brain. He replaced a battery, patched a tire, did a few oil changes, helped Boyd pop a dent out of old Mrs. Forster’s corolla. By the time his last shift was over, he barely felt like he’d begun, but his body protested his mental alertness. Every one of his limbs felt heavy as he pulled at the great overhead doors so that he could finish locking up.

“Parrish.”

His hand slipped at the lock, and it took him another try to get the key to twist correctly. He finished locking each of the three doors before turning around. Ronan could do with learning some patience, and he needed a moment to gather his thoughts before he faced him.

Many far-flung concepts had been slow solidifying in his mind all day, brought on by the casual comfort of the day before, the frantic scramble of their morning, the visceral reactions he couldn’t seem to control wherever Ronan was concerned. He hadn’t exactly been expecting Ronan to come back for him at the end of today, but he wasn’t surprised by it.

He wasn’t eager to let go of the thread of their weekend together, and he didn’t think Ronan was either.

“Lynch,” he finally said, turning around and looking at him evenly. Ronan was leaning casually against the hood of his car, but his nonchalant posture was belied by how tightly his fingers wrapped around the beer in his hand. It was unopened, but he tossed it to Adam, who caught it deftly.

“You know I don’t drink,” Adam tossed it back, unoffended by the offer.

Ronan shrugged and smiled, “Yeah, but I do.” He held up the rest of a six-pack, quirking his eyebrow as though expecting praise for using his Aglionby privilege to get his fake ID successfully accepted. For once Adam felt only amused instead of resentful.

He walked toward the car, and was hit suddenly with a vivid sense of déjà vu. He stumbled to a stop in front of Ronan, who reached out to tug idly at the trailing arm of his jumpsuit where it was tied around his waist. He felt it too.

They didn’t say anything about it, just got into the car and cracked the windows to let the cool night air inside. Adam fidgeted with the plastic loops holding Ronan’s beer together, pulling at the perforated edges to make them come apart.

It didn’t even occur to him to tell Ronan to take him home. The road to The Barns felt familiar by now, and Ronan drumming his fingers impatiently on the wheel provided a staccato counter-beat to the pounding rhythm of his music. Adam’s heart felt like it was loud enough to be heard alongside both of them, although the rush of night air was helping to steady it by now.

When they arrived at the house Ronan didn’t go inside, even though it was nearly dusk. Instead, he went around to the back of the car and grabbed a thick plaid blanket from the trunk, waited tolerantly by the edge of the drive until Adam grabbed the beer and went to stand beside him.

They walked down the hill toward the giant tree, and Adam felt a newfound sense of inevitability that intensified as they arrived at the base of it. Ronan slung the blanket around his neck and began to climb the rope ladder, and Adam could do nothing but awkwardly tuck the beer into the waist of his coveralls and follow.

The view was just as spectacular as he remembered from his dream: the house glowing atop the hill, the fields and barns, the hulking forms of the slumbering cows like so many boulders scattered by a giant’s hand.

He handed Ronan a beer without being asked, and Ronan grunted in thanks. They hadn’t spoken since Ronan had arrived to get him, and the tension of the car ride kept ratcheting up higher and higher the longer the silence stretched on. Ronan was on to his third beer before long, and they sat on the edge of the platform with their thighs pressed together, ankles swinging and occasionally catching on one another. The light on the horizon began to fade, the stars popping out one by one, the moon trimming every tree with silver.

Finally, when Adam was starting to get restless with anxiety, Ronan reached into his pocket. Adam jumped a little—the only movements Ronan had made up until now had been to take another pull from his can, but he didn’t seem at all drunk. His hands were a perfectly steady as he drew out a small aluminum tin that Adam immediately identified as an Altoid container.

Ronan handed it to him, and Adam held it in his hands, uncomprehending.

“Open it, you idiot,” Ronan said, and Adam jumped again. By that point he hadn’t honestly expected Ronan to speak for the rest of the night.

“Ok,” Adam said, and cracked the lid open.

Inside there were dozens of tiny glowing orbs, and as the lid came free they began to rattle together anticipatorily. Slowly they began to rise out of the tin, a steady stream of them released into the night sky like tiny glass fireflies.

Adam watched them with dawning wonder. They were beautiful, perfect replicates of the “fireflies” in Ronan’s dream world, and he supposed that must have been the source of the strange buzzing sound that morning. Ronan had dreamed these into being and captured them for Adam.

He looked around at Ronan and was startled by the look on his face. He was farther away than he would have expected, and his expression was raw, blue eyes wide and hungry as he watched Adam enjoying his gift.

Adam blushed, suddenly realizing that Ronan must have recreated their shared dreamscape to bring the fireflies into reality, probably with a needy Adam included. He almost envied his dream-self for being the source of Ronan’s arousal that morning.

Then again, that was ridiculous. Here he was alone with Ronan and no excuses, and there should be nothing stopping him from finally confronting this.

But just as he opened his mouth to speak, Ronan said, “I know.”

“You know what?” Adam asked, stymied.

“It wasn’t a dream, was it?” Ronan clarified. “Or, it was a dream, but it was really you there.”

Adam opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. Eventually he settled for nodding instead of speaking.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Ronan’s brow was furrowed. He looked like he was a cross between irritated and embarrassed. Adam wasn’t sure he’d ever seen that particular combination on Ronan’s face before, and was a little ashamed of how cute he found it.

Since when was anything Ronan did “cute”?

“I didn’t know how,” he said quietly. “It didn’t feel right.”

“Invading my dream?” Ronan asked.

“Hearing that—you know—that you—“ Adam tried valiantly to say the words, but his throat closed tight around them. They were too huge to release into this still summer night, too important to slip into this fragile moment.

“You felt bad,” Ronan said slowly, “that you tried to come on to me in a dream?”

Adam shrugged.

“Or that you got me to tell you I loved you?”

Adam’s entire body went white-hot.

“Because,” Ronan said lowly, “you know that it’s true.”

Adam looked at him because he couldn’t do anything else. Ronan’s face was intent even in its vulnerability, and it struck Adam like a blow to the solar plexus. He felt winded by the strength of Ronan’s feeling.

“Does it scare you?” Ronan asked, and he looked uncertain for the first time.

Adam shook his head.

“Oh,” Ronan said. He sounded out of breath too. “Did you mean what you said too?”

Adam nodded.

“Oh.”

Ronan took another sip of his beer and looked away from Adam. Adam didn’t mind; it gave him the opportunity to unabashedly examine the gorgeous planes of Ronan’s face, the dangerous slope of his shoulders under his tight black tank top. He wanted so badly to touch, but he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to. Not yet.

“I didn’t want to take advantage of you,” Ronan said.

“I want you to,” Adam replied, and Ronan sucked in a shocked breath, turning wide eyes on Adam’s face.

“It felt creepy,” Ronan admitted, “every time I almost—“ he held a hand up to Adam’s chest but didn’t touch, “—in a dream, you know? It didn’t feel right, either. Not to let you choose in real life.”

“I know what you mean,” Adam said, chagrined.

“It’s ok,” Ronan said quickly. “I didn’t know that you just thought I wanted to fuck you.”

The word “fuck” nearly made Adam surge forward, but he held himself at bay. Obscenities dripping from Ronan’s lips had never felt so thrilling.

“I don’t just want that. I mean, I want it too,” Ronan said, and he set his beer carefully aside, “but I want the rest of it more.” He smiled unexpectedly, a slight smirk that got Adam’s heart beating double time. “And I like knowing that you wanted to ravish me when you thought I was a figment of your imagination. Very romance-novel, Parrish.”

“You asshole,” Adam said, and grabbed him by the back of the neck. And then he was kissing Ronan Lynch in a fucking tree while dozen of dream-fireflies danced around them in the twilight, and he knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Always thanks and credit to MrsGuinevere for the beta!
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr!](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been crying the entire morning about this election, so I think we all deserve some Pynch porn.

So it was true that he’d been Ronan’s first kiss. He knew that now, now that he’d seen Ronan undone on the hood of a car, lain with him sleepy in the soft blankets of his bed, known him beautifully content in the comfort of a dream.

It made a strange sort of sense, him and Ronan.

It made sense that he hadn’t come first, but that he had staked the strongest claim.

So here they were at last, and Adam didn’t know a lot of things, but he knew that this was _important_.

                                                        

* * *

 

 

He also knew that he never wanted to stop kissing Ronan, because it was headier than any dream, more mysterious than the power of Cabeswater. It didn’t seem like it should be possible for his body to _want_ this much or for his mind to feel this blissfully free of anything but Ronan’s body against his.

They tipped backward onto the blanket, scattering the empty cans, Ronan rolling deftly so that Adam landed on top of him. One of Ronan’s hands settled on Adam’s thigh to steady him, then slid up to his hip, pulling him down so that they were flush together.

Adam huffed a soft laugh, one hand still wrapped around the back of Ronan’s neck, the other twisted in the strap of his tank top. Ronan’s skin beneath his hand felt warm and silky-soft, and there was a smattering of freckles on his shoulder that he’d never noticed before. Adam leaned down and kissed them, used his tongue to trace between them like a constellation. Ronan shuddered and threaded his fingers into Adam’s hair, tugged until Adam mouthed up the column of his throat and followed the line of his jaw back to his lips.

Ronan’s lips parted easily beneath his, and Adam was reminded of just how little experience either of them really had with this. They were being gentle with one another, and Adam found that he didn’t want that. He had waited too long for this to be patient now.

He raked his nails down Ronan’s arm, bit lightly at his lower lip, and was rewarded by the low, surprised noise Ronan made. The kiss deepened, and Adam slipped his tongue into the velvet softness of Ronan’s mouth. Ronan groaned, and Adam could feel the vibration under his palm. It made him brave and dizzy, being wanted like this.

He kissed Ronan hungrily, tried to use the kiss to convey his intentions even as he slotted his thigh between Ronan’s and rolled his hips purposefully against him.

Ronan broke away from him with a startled gasp, head thumping back against the warped wood of the platform.

“ _Adam_ ,” he choked out, eyes wide and dazed. Adam could feel him hard against his leg.

“What?” Adam traced a finger across Ronan’s lower lip. It was plush and red from kissing, almost bruised-looking. He wanted to lean down and bite it, but Ronan sucked his finger into his mouth first. Adam watched in fascination as his second knuckle disappeared between Ronan’s lips, felt his cock twitch as Ronan swirled his tongue around the tip. “Fuck,” he breathed.

Ronan nodded vehemently, releasing his finger to kiss Adam greedily, crushed against him.

“We should go back to the house,” Ronan said eventually, and Adam nodded. It was starting to get frustrating, not being able to do anything more than grind against Ronan through both of their clothes.

He wasn’t really sure how they made it back down the rope ladder or to the house, but suddenly they were at Ronan’s room, and Adam was kissing him again. He was kicking the door closed, shoving Ronan up against it, and Ronan was laughing incredulously into his mouth. They fought with both of their shirts, Adam content just to ruck Ronan’s up under his armpits until Ronan rolled his eyes and pulled it off properly. Adam barely had time to feel shy as he shucked his own, because then Ronan was walking him backward toward the bed.

They fell onto the bed in an ungainly mess, and Adam couldn’t help but laugh at Ronan’s scowl as he tried unsuccessfully to unbutton Adam’s jeans one-handed.

“This is not sexy,” Ronan snarled, and Adam shook his head in disagreement. He’d never seen anything better than Ronan red-cheeked and diamond-hard, defeated by a pair of pants.

“It is,” Adam said, and kissed the glower off of his face before flicking the button of his pants open and kicking them off. Ronan’s were soon bunched on the ground beside his, and then Ronan was shoving his hand into Adam’s boxers and—

“ _Jesus Christ_ ,” Adam swore, bowing up off of the bed. Ronan sunk his teeth into his shoulder, and the sting amplified every sensation as Ronan wrapped his hand around his cock.

“Leave him out of this,” Ronan smirked, kissing his way down Adam’s chest.

“Ronan, what are you— _Oh_.”

If Adam thought that he was unprepared for the feeling of Ronan’s hand on his dick, it was nothing compared to the sight of Ronan sweeping his boxers off of his legs and licking a hot stripe up the underside of his cock. It was almost delicate, the way that Ronan took him into his mouth, lips parting reverently even though Adam couldn’t stop his hips from jerking up.

“Ronan,” Adam gasped, and then hated himself when it made Ronan look up at him through his lashes. He was going to come in about two seconds, and Ronan was going to laugh at him, and it wouldn’t be mean, but it would still be embarrassing.

“What do you want, Adam?” Ronan released his dick, and his voice was deep and husky.

“You,” Adam said, and then blushed, because _god_ , that sounded so fucking clichéd. Ronan laughed softly against his thigh and leaned up to lathe his tongue over one of Adam’s nipples.

“Yeah, ok,” he whispered. He sat up, and Adam propped himself up on his elbows to see what he was doing. Ronan was rummaging around in the bedside table next to him. Adam swallowed thickly. He thought he had an idea about what Ronan was looking for.

Ronan finally made a small noise of victory and fell back against his headboard, shoving the pillows around until he was satisfied.

“Comfy?” Adam asked, smiling.

“Very,” Ronan said.

Adam crawled toward him across the bed and swallowed hard as Ronan popped the cap on the lube in his hand. He felt his mouth go bone dry when Ronan propped his leg up and slicked his own fingers.

“This ok?” Ronan asked, pausing with his finger pressed against his entrance.

Adam couldn’t do anything but nod as Ronan slid a slick finger into himself. His eyes slid closed in concentration, and he moaned.

Adam watched in fascination as Ronan added another, dusky pink stretching surprisingly easily around his digits. Ronan hitched his thigh up and out of the way, making Adam’s view even clearer, and Adam moved close. He settled his hand just north of Ronan’s knee, and Ronan’s eyes flashed back open. They were wild as they met Adam’s, and he groaned again. His other hand scrabbled to the side and then he was tossing a condom at Adam, who tore it open with shaking hands.

They were oddly quiet as Adam rolled it on and Ronan pulled his fingers free. Adam lined his hips up with Ronan’s hole and held his cock in place as he started to roll his hips forward.

Ronan made a little noise of impatience and grabbed Adam’s hip, forcing him deeper.

Being inside of Ronan was like nothing else Adam had ever felt. He didn’t know that anything could feel like this; he was acutely aware of just how warm and alive Ronan was. He could feel every rumbling groan, every clench of his muscles, jolt through both of their bodies like an electrical surge.

“Move,” Ronan complained eventually, and kicked Adam gently in the back. Adam raised his eyebrows at him, but acquiesced.

The first thrust knocked the air out of both of them. Part of Adam knew that Ronan had done this before—he’d gotten fucked much harder than this, he could take it, but Adam wasn’t sure that _he_ could. He had only tenuous control over himself at best, and he wasn’t sure how to communicate to Ronan that he didn’t want to hurt him.

Ronan seemed to understand though. Before he quite knew what was happening, he was being rolled over onto his back, pressed flat to the bed with Ronan astride him. He couldn’t complain at the change in view; Ronan was looking down at him with his lip between his teeth and Adam’s dick in his ass. It felt surreal in the best possible way.

But then Ronan started to move, a slow, fluid grind that made Adam choke out a humiliatingly high-pitched whine. He didn’t know where to put his hands, so he settled for Ronan’s thighs again, and he dug his fingers in as he felt Ronan’s muscles flex with effort.

Ronan lifted himself up and then sunk back down, hard, and Adam’s back arched up from the bed. Ronan looked too pretty to be human. Maybe he wasn’t; Adam didn’t know what you were when your genes were dreams, but it was somehow _more_ than everyone else, almost too much to bear. Ronan was running his hands over his own chest, then down over Adam’s, his brow furrowing as his hips picked up speed, fucking himself devastatingly onto Adam’s cock.

Adam could feel himself spiraling, tension building hot and insistent in the base of his spine. He reached up to palm Ronan’s cock, wanting to feel him, and Ronan momentarily lost his rhythm before pitching forward and kissing Adam. It was barely even a kiss, mostly a wet slide of lips and tongue, breath mingling hotly. Ronan clenched around him, and Adam lost focus on Ronan’s cock and accidentally bit his lip as he started to come.

Ronan rode him through it, taking over and jerking himself, breath rasping out of his chest as he watched Adam shudder through his orgasm. Adam felt wrung out, tried and raw, everything narrowed down to the tight heat of Ronan around his softening cock. He dimly realized that Ronan’s breath was speeding up, and that was all the warning he got before Ronan came on a shout, cum streaking Adam’s chest as his hand worked his cock.

“Fuck,” Adam whispered, staring up at Ronan in wonder. Ronan grinned a little sheepishly, but he looked extremely pleased with himself. He ducked his head and Adam hissed as Ronan licked a path from Adam’s breastbone up to his lips so that Adam could taste the salty bite of Ronan on his tongue.

He kissed him with all the energy he had left, hand coming up to stroke lazily at the back of Ronan’s head. Ronan made a soft, contented noise against his mouth and arched into the touch.

He broke away and smiled down at Adam. It was so unguarded that it took Adam’s breath away, until Ronan opened his mouth and said, “You have cum in your hair.”

“You’re awful,” Adam huffed, not even wanting to think about how that had happened. He stripped the condom off and knotted it, got up off of the bed to throw it away. He padded over to Ronan’s bathroom and blushed but gave Ronan the finger when he wolf-whistled at Adam’s bare ass.

He mutely held a damp washcloth out to Ronan, who shifted to the edge of the bed so that he could take it and dutifully wiped down Adam’s hair and belly. He followed the path of the towel with his mouth, so that by the time he was done Adam was almost hard again.

“It’s counterproductive,” Adam whispered as Ronan sucked him back into his mouth, “to go again the second we’re clean.”

“Don’t care,” Ronan nuzzled at the base of his dick, cupped his balls in his hand, licked up to the head again. He swallowed Adam down again, and Adam had the wild thought that Ronan _loved_ this. He was moaning more than Adam was, bobbing his head in time with his hand, leftover lube and cum and saliva slicking his way. It should have been disgusting, but it wasn’t. It was just hot, and Adam was oversensitive and gasping after being inside Ronan.

“You’re so good at this,” he scraped his nails across Ronan’s scalp, and Ronan shivered, preening under the attention. “You like this, don’t you?” Ronan moaned, vibrating through Adam’s cock. His pretty lips were stretched tight around Adam, cheeks hollowing as his throat opened, and all it took was Adam reaching down, running a fingertip around where he was inside of Ronan. He came without warning him first, and he would have felt worse about it if Ronan hadn’t looked so fucking into it, swallowing thickly and licking him completely clean.

“Sorry,” Ronan said the second he pulled off. His voice was so raspy that Adam’s cock probably would have made a valiant effort at interest if he hadn’t just come twice in a row.

“Why are you apologizing?” Adam asked weakly. His legs were threatening to go out from under him, so he climbed into Ronan’s lap, shoving his face into the crook of his neck. He could hear the ‘g’ drop off the end of his speech; he was too tired to hide the Henrietta drawl anymore.

“I couldn’t resist your dick,” Ronan smiled against his hair.

“Oh yeah, that’s real difficult for me,” Adam said dryly. He could feel Ronan’s cock trapped between them, and suddenly he wanted to know what it tasted like. It didn’t take a lot of effort to slip out of Ronan’s arms and land between his legs, and it was worth the absence of warmth to see Ronan’s eyes snap wide.

“Adam, you don’t have to— _Shit_.”

Adam didn’t really know any technique for this. He’d watched plenty of porn as research the past few weeks, jerked off shamefully in the shower thinking about it, felt Ronan do it to him already, but… this was different. This was Ronan’s cock hard and heavy on his tongue, thicker in his mouth than it had felt in his hand. He wasn’t adept by any means, but he gave it his all, getting Ronan’s dick wet and sucking enthusiastically.

Ronan’s hand clamped tight into his hair and Adam didn’t mind even a little bit. On the contrary, he took more of Ronan into his mouth, sucked harder, felt Ronan hit the back of his throat, and then, “ _Fuck fuck fuck!_ ”  
Ronan came down the back of his throat and Adam pulled away instinctively, catching most of it across his lips and cheek.

“Oh my god,” Ronan’s hoarse voice was disbelieving. Adam looked up at him, then realized how he must look right now. Lips swollen from sucking Ronan’s dick, face painted with Ronan’s cum. He used a finger to swipe some of it from his cheek and then sucked it into his mouth. It didn’t really taste half bad.

Ronan let out a feral sound and then grabbed him and kissed him, tongue shoving deep into his mouth, seeking himself out. “You have no idea how hot you are,” he whispered. “Jesus.”

“Leave him out of this,” Adam echoed, then pushed at his shoulders until they were lying across the bed again. Adam tucked himself under Ronan’s arm and yanked the blanket up over them. It was covered in all kinds of pretty questionable stuff at the moment, but he couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Have nice dreams,” he whispered into Ronan’s skin, hand pressed to his chest.

“No doubt about it,” Ronan murmured back, and curled his hand around Adam’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always to my wonderful beta! Thanks MrsGuinevere :-)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter! It's not super long, but I wanted to wrap things up nicely before I went on my break and got to writing other things. I would love love love to write more in this fandom, so we'll see what happens next :-)

_Bang bang bang_

For the second morning in a row, Adam woke with a jolt. He was tangled up in a knot of blankets and limbs, Ronan stretched out next to him on his stomach with one arm thrown carelessly across Adam’s chest. Adam poked him and he stirred just in time for another round of banging to echo up through the house.

“Are we under attack?” Ronan groaned into his pillow. He lifted his head up and slid a hand stealthily down Adam’s abdomen until it was wrapped around his dick. “I will gladly man your southern border.” 

“For fuck’s sake, _Ronan_ ,” Adam tried to protest, but he’d woken up achingly hard, and Ronan was rolling over onto his side to fix him with a heavy-lidded look. “Someone’s at the door,” he whined, and Ronan squeezed at the base of his dick, propping himself up on his elbow to watch Adam’s face.

“I would kiss you right now,” Ronan dropped his face to Adam’s shoulder, nosing along the skin all the way to his neck and then up the column of his throat, “but your breath is disgusting right now.”

“Asshole,” Adam breathed, leaning into Ronan’s touch in spite of himself. There were sparks dancing up and down his spine from the lazy way Ronan was stroking him.

_BANG BANG BANG_

“Fuck, fine, ok,” Ronan pulled away and rolled to the edge of the bed, throwing the covers back. Adam lay there, panting and disbelieving, and turned his head to watch the sinewy lines of Ronan’s back as he stood up from the edge of the bed. The morning light splashed across his tattoo made it seem softer somehow, the violent hook of a claw tenderly caressing the skin beneath.

“You fucking—,” Adam swore and got out of the bed too, dragging on the first pair of boxers he saw. Ronan tossed a shirt at him, and it hit him around the face. He could hear Ronan laughing at him as he yanked it over his head, and Adam flipped his middle finger at him.

“Am I rubbing off on you?” Ronan sauntered over to him, double-entendre dripping from every syllable. He settled his hands on Adam’s waist, and Adam found himself swaying forward into him. He was barely aware of it, still muzzy with sleep and arousal.

The knocking came again, somehow even louder than before, and Ronan moved away, making for the door with the stilted gait of someone trying to conceal an erection.

Smiling to himself, Adam followed him.

By the time he made it downstairs, Ronan was leaning against the front doorframe, being thoroughly chewed out by Gansey.

“You can’t just disappear on me for days at a time, you have no idea do you, what this _does_ to me, when I can’t get a hold of you and—Adam?” Gansey looked like he was on his way to a very wholesome J. Crew photo shoot; all soft cashmere quarter-zip and boat shoes, bronzed skin and healthfully flushed cheeks.

“Uh,” Adam said, eloquently. “Hi.” He punctuated his words (‘word’, really) with a half-hearted little wave, and Ronan snorted in derision at him. He shot him a glare that he hoped conveyed something along the lines of “you planning on sucking your own dick tonight?”

“Are you boyfriends now?”

“What?”

Both Ronan and Adam whipped around to stare at Gansey. He’d crossed his arms defensively over his chest, but his eyebrows were raised and he looked considering. His eyes darted between their bare legs and up over Adam’s boxers and t-shirt. He looked down at himself and realized that both articles of clothing were very obviously Ronan’s. Hugo Boss was a little outside his price range.

“So this was what you were doing,” he turned his piercing gaze to Ronan, who still looked a bit shell-shocked. “Shacking up for an entire weekend? You can’t just,” he gestured through the door, an all-encompassing sweep that seemed to take into account Adam and Ronan, their general state of undress, and the entire house as well, “hide away in your, your— _love nest_ for days at a time without telling anyone!”

“Love nest?” it was Ronan’s turn to look flabbergasted. “What the hell, man?”

“ _You know what I mean_ ,” Gansey actually wrung his hands. “I was worried. And, also,” he looked over at Adam, “I’m very happy for you two.”

“Jesus Christ,” Adam had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning at how obviously out-of-his-depth Gansey was.

“So what?” Ronan lurched up from the doorframe and leered at Gansey. “Am I supposed to call you every time I’m about to suck him off? Send a ‘Adam’s gonna fuck me tonight’ text before he lubes up?”

“Please don’t,” Adam said faintly, wincing.

Gansey looked suitably horrified. “No, you know that’s not—“

“Have a good day, Dick,” Ronan rolled his eyes and made to close the door. “I have to go blow my boyfriend before breakfast, if that’s all right with you.”

“Oh my god,” Adam groaned as Ronan shut the door firmly in Gansey’s face. “That was awful. You need to apologize to him.”

“For what?” Ronan towered over him, fingers already playing with the waistband of Adam’s boxers. “Thinking you look hot in my clothes?”

“You know what,” Adam sighed. “You could have texted him.”

“I was a little preoccupied,” Ronan murmured against the hinge of his jaw.

“Still,” Adam said, mouth falling open as Ronan scraped teeth across his earlobe.

“Fucking _fine_ ,” Ronan grumbled, and yanked the door back open. “HEY DICK,” he roared across the driveway. Gansey paused with his hand on the door of the Pig. “Sorry I didn’t call to let you know Adam was getting it in,” he called. “Next time we’ll invite you to watch!”

He shut the door again and turned to grin at Adam. “Better?”

“I think Gansey knows too much about us now,” Adam sighed again.

“I will not be shamed for liking it up the ass,” Ronan sniffed, “Fuck your hegemonic masculinity.”

“Dear god,” Adam raised his eyes beseechingly to the ceiling. He didn’t think he’d ever asked for divine intervention before this moment. “Make me breakfast, Lynch,” he turned and padded toward the kitchen.

He judiciously pretended he didn’t hear Ronan’s muttered “would rather eat _you_ ” as he opened the fridge.

He hid his smile behind the door and pulled a carton of eggs out. He’d take the breakfast blowjob too, but first he wanted to make his _boyfriend_ cook for him. It was the least he could do after embarrassing them both, right?

“What’re you smiling about?” Ronan asked suspiciously.

“Just enjoying being someone’s boyfriend,” he teased, handing the carton to Ronan. He was satisfied to see Ronan’s face go a charming shade of pink.

“Whatever, don’t think you get any special treatment,” he complained, but he got a bowl down to crack the eggs into.

Still, forty minutes and an orgasm later, Adam could say that for the first time he did feel pretty special. Not because of magic forests or prophetic visions or Welsh kings, but because of him and Ronan in the kitchen of the Barns, creating a new dream for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much love to everyone who read this and left me comments and kudos and support on tumblr. You're all wonderful, and I appreciate the hell out of you. 
> 
> Come prompt me! [beersforqueers on tumblr](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)

**Author's Note:**

> Shameless self-promotion: [beersforqueers on tumblr](http://omgbeersforqueers.tumblr.com/)


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